Over the course of five seasons between 1995 and 2000, SYFY‘s Sliders (now streaming on Peacock) took us to dozens of alternate Earths, each existing in some other part of an infinite multiverse. Each of these worlds are almost like our own, but different in one or more significant ways.
On one world, San Francisco is a wildlife preserve where dinosaurs roam the forests. On others, humanity has been replaced by a series of anthropomorphic androids, a pulsar is threatening the planet, or antibiotics were never invented. Each new episode took us to a different reality, but those were just the ones that made it to air.
Along the way, series creator Tracy Tormé cooked up a few reality-hopping adventures we never got to see, including the unproduced episode “Heat of the Moment.” The existence of the episode-that-never-was first came to the attention of fans at DragonCon 1997, but it wasn’t until years later that Tormé finally revealed what the episode would have been about.
Sliders creator Tracy Tormé wrote an unproduced Sliders episode with a surprising twist
Tormé was digging through old boxes when he came across a few artifacts from his writing career, some story ideas for Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the unproduced Sliders script. “I just got the dust off of it; I think from a fan’s perspective it may very well be the Holy Grail.” Tormé said, in an interview with Earth Prime.
The episode was written during a turbulent period for the series. Behind the scenes, things weren’t going very smoothly, and circumstances in Tormé’s personal life ultimately pulled him away from the show. Around the same time John Rhys-Davies and Sabrina Lloyd (Professor Maxamillian Arturo and Wade Welles) left the series, and star Jerry O’Connell (Quinn Mallory) wasn’t far behind. By the end of the series, Cleavant Derricks (Rembrandt “Crying Man” Brown) was the only remaining member of the original Sliders crew.
“Heat of the Moment” would have been part of the third season, but it would have heavily featured Professor Arturo, and by the time they were ready to make the episode, Rhys-Davies had already departed. Given the choice between heavily retooling the episode and tossing it, Tormé stuffed the script in a drawer. It was briefly considered as the story for an issue of the Sliders comic series, but that didn’t happen either. It seemed the episode had been lost to the space between worlds, but not forever.
What the lost Sliders episode “Heat of the Moment” would have been about
In “Heat of the Moment,” the Sliders would have landed on the Golden Gate Bridge, the Sun high, hot, and looming huge in the sky. After some investigation, they learn an asteroid struck the planet with enough force to knock it out of orbit. Now the planet is spiraling toward the Sun, and the timer won’t open another portal until it’s too late.
With death knocking down their door, Rembrandt goes off to reconcile with the double of his dead brother. Meanwhile, Quinn and Wade finally declare their love for one another, and the professor hatches a Hail Mary plan to save the world. Arturo teams up with this world’s Bennish (Jason Gaffney), putting their heads together to rescue humanity. On this world, Quinn and Bennish worked together to develop sliding technology but, in a reversal of the series pilot, they created an antigravity machine and blew the roof off the lab, by accident. Now, Arturo is hoping gravity technologies might help them move the Earth back into a stable orbit.
The Sliders have been in this sort of situation before, their backs against the wall and the fate of an entire world hanging in the balance, but this time is different. Rembrandt is murdered by the brother he hoped to connect with, and the professor fails to save the planet. Quinn and Wade get hastily married, just in time to burn up with everyone else. Everything seems lost when Tormé delivers a twist.
An unexpected portal opens, and we realize the Sliders we’ve been following weren’t our Sliders at all. Our Sliders have just arrived, and with only 2 minutes on the timer, they’ll be out of here before the next commercial break.
Maybe we’ll finally get to see the episode for real if that fabled Sliders revival ever actually happens.
Until then, catch all five seasons of Sliders, streaming now on Peacock.
